Data Governance Manager

Role Summary

• We are seeking a client-facing Data Governance Manager to design and implement governance programs that enable trusted, compliant, and high-quality data across our clients’ enterprises. You will lead governance operating models, policies, metadata and catalog initiatives, data quality management, and privacy/security controls—working closely with stakeholders in Data/Analytics, Engineering, Security, Risk, Legal, and business domains across the Middle East.

Key Responsibilities

• Strategy and Operating Model

• Define a pragmatic data governance strategy aligned to client business outcomes.

• Establish governance operating models (councils, RACI, data owner/steward roles).

• Develop and maintain policies, standards, and procedures (quality, metadata, classification, access, retention).

• Metadata, Catalog, and Lineage

• Stand up and administer enterprise data catalogs and business glossaries.

• Identify and manage critical data elements (CDEs) and data domains with clear ownership.

• Drive metadata standards and automated lineage for impact analysis and change control.

• Data Quality Management

• Define data quality dimensions, rules, thresholds, and SLAs for priority datasets.

• Implement monitoring, alerting, and issue management; drive RCA and remediation.

• Partner with engineering to embed quality checks into pipelines and data contracts.

• Privacy, Security, and Compliance (Middle East focus)

• Implement data classification and handling standards; support privacy-by-design.

• Partner with Security/IAM on RBAC/ABAC, masking, encryption, and least-privilege access.

• Support compliance with regional and international regulations, such as:

• Egypt Personal Data Protection Law (Law 151/2020)

• KSA PDPL, UAE Data Protection Law, Bahrain PDPL, Qatar PDP Law

• GDPR/CPRA (as applicable to client operations)

• Sectoral requirements (e.g., SOX, PCI DSS, HIPAA where relevant)

• Advise on cross-border data transfer, residency, and sovereignty considerations.

• Lifecycle and Risk

• Define retention/disposal schedules, archival practices, and defensible disposition.

• Review new data sources, sharing agreements, and vendors for governance and risk impacts.

• Change Management and Adoption

• Lead governance councils and steward communities; drive accountability and adoption.

• Deliver communications, training, and data literacy programs to uplift capabilities.

• Reporting and KPIs

• Build governance scorecards covering DQ health, lineage coverage, glossary adoption, and policy compliance.

• Report progress and risks to client executives and audit/compliance stakeholders.

• Tools and Enablement

• Evaluate, implement, and manage governance tooling (catalog, DQ, lineage, MDM).

• Create playbooks, templates, and self-service guides to scale best practices.

• Consulting and Practice Development

• Contribute to proposals, SOWs, and solutioning; estimate effort and plan deliveries.

• Coach junior team members; contribute to accelerators and thought leadership.

What You’ll Bring

• 7+ years in data governance/data management, with at least 2 years leading multi-stakeholder initiatives; consulting experience preferred.

• Strong grounding in DAMA-DMBOK and/or DCAM, and practical experience with:

• Data ownership/stewardship models and governance forums

• Data cataloging, business glossary, and lineage

• Data quality frameworks and issue management

• Data classification, access governance, retention, and lifecycle

• Hands-on experience with relevant tools and platforms (one or more):

• Catalog/metadata: Collibra, Alation, Informatica Axon/EDC, Atlan, Microsoft Purview

• Data quality/observability: Informatica IDQ, Great Expectations, Monte Carlo, Bigeye

• MDM: Informatica, Reltio, Semarchy

• Lineage: Built-in catalog lineage, MANTA, OpenLineage

• Cloud/data platforms: Azure (incl. Purview), AWS, GCP, Snowflake, Databricks; strong SQL

• Understanding of IAM concepts (RBAC/ABAC), masking/tokenization, API governance, CDC/event schemas, and data-sharing patterns.

• Familiarity with ISO 27001, NIST CSF, SOC 2 is a plus.

• Excellent communication, facilitation, and stakeholder management skills; ability to translate technical concepts into business outcomes.

• Education: Bachelor’s degree in Information Systems, Computer Science, Data/Analytics, or related field; advanced degree/certifications (CDMP, DCAM, Collibra Ranger, CIPP/CIPM/CIPT) are a plus.

• Language: Fluent English required; Arabic is a strong plus.

• Work authorization in Egypt.

Working Model and Travel

• Hybrid role based in Cairo ETIC; collaboration aligned with Gulf business hours as needed.

• Regional travel to client sites across the Middle East may be required (up to 20–30%), subject to project needs.